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Dupuy: A little bit of everyone at 'Occupy' protests

You may have heard the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being paid to camp out. I heard it; they’re being funded by a shifty billionaire and that’s why they’re demanding billionaires be taxed more. Seems likely. Also they’re all communists and ACORN. And whatever you’ve been scared of before — probably that.

The weirdest dismissal of the encampments that have sprung up across the country is it’s just a bunch of homeless people — who’d be sleeping on the streets anyway. As if homeless people should have no voice in a discussion about economic justice. As if huge groups of homeless people shouldn’t warrant media attention.

I asked a protester in New York, Ashley Anderson, about this very thing: Where is their rapid response to deal with all the rumors and accusations? Where is their team of media people? “This here,” he pointed to the crowded GA — General Assembly — at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan a few feet from where we were standing. Every night hundreds participate in a slow, all-inclusive assembly to figure out a consensus on what to do next. He then said if anyone didn’t like what they’re doing, all are welcome to come down and tell them.

I’ve now been to four Occupations and the lamest rumor I’ve heard from carefully coifed talking heads is that the protesters are all something: all Ron Paul fans; or all union; or all liberals; or all white; or all illegals; or all students who don’t want to pay their loans back, or all “the people who always show up to a protest.”

Actually, Occupy encampments are more “a lot of everything” as opposed to “all” of anything. That’s why the rumors keep going — those who wish to discredit the movement pick out one person to identify with the movement and then they’re all Neo-New Redux Black Panthers.

The under-reported story to me is how many veterans are at these Occupations. I spoke at length with a Canadian vet who served in Somalia in the ‘90s and is now “pitching in” at Occupy Toronto. In the United States, I met several vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. They volunteered to fight for a country they now feel has fewer opportunities for them and their families. Vets are the middle class. They are as big a set of stakeholders in the country as anyone and they’ve been given a rotten deal just like the rest of the 99 percent.

Meet the new face of Occupy Wall Street: Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine and Iraq War vet who was shot in the head with a “non-lethal round” during a raid on Occupy Oakland. His skull was fractured and it put him in a coma.

He has since awakened to being a rallying cry for the movement. I followed a march in Toronto to the U.S. consulate to denounce police brutality in Oakland. There was even a solidarity march to the U.S. Embassy from Tahrir Square in Egypt.

Olsen’s story is compelling. Not just because he fought in a foreign war, and while in his home country — utilizing his First Amendment right to peaceful assembly — was fired on by police. His may be the name you know from Occupy Oakland, but like Rosa Parks, he’s part of a bigger story.

He’s a symbol for something we’ve managed not to talk about, which is that we’ve had two (sometimes three) wars in this country in the last 10 years, and those who’ve fought overseas are coming home to an America with a shockingly high poverty rate. An America with the worst economic inequality in four generations. An America with less for those who work and fight and die.

Which is why they’re camped out and asking the question: “What have we been fighting for?”

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